1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of wireless communication, more particularly, to a real-time video transmission method on wireless communication networks.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of third generation mobile communication systems will enable the transmission of digital video over wireless networks. A key problem that has to be solved for wireless video transmission is how to deliver video streams of an acceptable quality over low-bit rate channels with burst errors while meeting the real-time requirements of video applications. Conventionally, there are two approaches to protect video data against transmission errors, which are the channel coding approach and the error retransmission approach. In the channel coding approach, video data is coded using an error control code for data being transmitted. Therefore, when the transmitted video data has errors, it can be corrected by the error control code. However, due to the use of this error control code, the channel coding approach introduces a prohibitive amount of overhead in order to provide the necessary correcting ability over error prone channel. As for the error retransmission approach, it retransmits data only when the corresponding received video data is not correct. Although such an approach may reduce the redundancy data transmitted, additional delay is introduced due to possible retransmission of corrupted data. Moreover, larger buffers are needed in both the transmitter and receiver sides, resulting in a high hardware cost. Therefore, there is a need to have a real-time video transmission method that can mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.
Accordingly, the object of the present invention is to provide a real-time video transmission method on wireless communication networks, such that a video stream is provided with a satisfactory error protective capability when being transmitted over a wireless channel, and the transmission delay can be reduced.
To achieve the object, the wireless video transmission method in accordance with the present invention first classifies the video stream into at least two classes of sensitivity, each corresponding to a sensitive class of data. Then, an automatic repeat request scheme is optionally applied on each sensitive class of data based on the corresponding class of sensitivity, wherein a sensitive class of data with a relative high class of sensitivity is assigned an automatic repeat request scheme having a relative high reliability.
The various objects and advantages of the present invention will be more readily understood from the following detailed description when read in conjunction with the appended drawing.